1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of recording/reproducing data on/from a storage medium, and more particularly, to a method of recording/reproducing data on/from a storage medium, which reduces a chip size of a recording/reproducing apparatus by reducing a memory capacity for error correction and data transmission to the storage medium or to a host.
2. Description of the Related Art
Optical discs are commonly used as large capacity storage media, which accommodate a large amount of user data, are convenient to use, and are highly durable.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a conventional recording/reproducing apparatus. Referring to FIG. 1, the recording/reproducing apparatus includes an encoder/decoder 120 that encodes data received from a host 190 or decodes data read from a storage medium 110 according to a predetermined method, an internal memory 150 that temporarily stores enoded/decoded data, a buffer manager 130 that manages the buffering of data between the internal memory 150 and a part which requires that data from the internal memory 150, an error correction code (ECC) unit 140 that performs (ECC) error correction on decoded data using parity information or generates parity information of data received from the host, a de-scramble/scramble and error-corrected data or scrambles and inserts an EDC into data received from the host 190, a host interface 170 that communicates with the host 190, and an external memory 180 that temporarily stores data to be transmitted to the host 190.
Of the above components, the encoder/decoder 120, the buffer manager 130, the de-scramble/scramble and EDC unit 160, the host interface 170, the ECC unit 140, and the internal memory 150, together are generally integrated into a single chip.
A conventional method of reproducing data from the storage medium 110 shown in FIG. 1 will now be described.
A signal read from the storage medium 110 is decoded by the decoder 120 into corresponding binary data 122. The buffer manager 130 temporarily stores the binary data 122 received from the decoder 120 in the internal memory 150. The internal memory 150 is divided into three sections: a first section 154 for storing all data from the decoder 120, a second section 156 for performing error correction on the data from the first section 154 by communicating with the ECC unit 140, and a third section 158 for storing resulting error corrected data to be transmitted to the de-scramble/scramble and EDC unit 160.
The buffer manager 130 sequentially stores data from the decoder 120 in the internal memory 150. If data stored in the internal memory 150 surpasses one ECC block, the buffer manager 130 sends one ECC block of data to the ECC unit 140. While the buffer manager 130 does this, data is continuously input to the buffer manager 130 and the buffer manager 130 continuously stores the data in the first section 154 of the internal memory 150.
The ECC unit 140 performs ECC correction on the data stored in the second section 156 by communicating with the second section 156 of the internal memory 150 via the buffer manager 130. After the ECC correction, the buffer manager 130 stores error corrected data in the third section 158 of the internal memory 150. The error corrected data stored in the third section 158 of the internal memory 150 is sent to the de-scramble/scramble and EDC unit 160 to be de-scrambled and EDC-checked. After de-scrambling and EDC checking of the error corrected data, resulting data is sent and stored in the external memory 180 through the host interface 170, and also is sent to the host 190.
A method of recording data on the storage medium 110 operates inversely of the reproducing method described above. In the method of recording data on the storage medium 110, the encoder/decoder 120 encodes data provided by the buffer manager 130 and records the encoded data on the storage medium 110, and the de-scramble/scramble data to the buffer manager 130.
In the conventional recording and reproducing method, the internal memory requires 3 sections because the ECC unit 140 exclusively uses one ECC block of memory, and thus further sections to store the data 122 received from the decoder and the data to be transmitted to the de-scramble and EDC unit 160 are needed. Most parts of the reproducing/recording apparatus 100 (the parts enclosed by a dashed rectangle in FIG. 1) are integrated into a single chip referred to as a system-on-chip. Here, a large capacity of internal memory may enlarge a size of the chip. If the chip is too large, various problems in designing and producing chips, e.g., reduced yield and extended testing time, may result.